The Wall Street Journal 'Top 50 Startup' With The $43m Funding Round

MaryAnn
Bekkedahl is
the co-founder and president of New York-based Keep
Holdings, a Wall
Street Journal Top 50 startup that has raised $43 million in Series A funding.
Keep Holdings operates three web services focusing on email management,
ecommerce, and advertising.

Formerly,
as the EVP, Group Publisher of Rodale, MaryAnn ran advertising sales for all
media at Rodale Inc., the leading global magazine and website publisher in
health and fitness content. MaryAnn was named Adweek Media’s “Publishing
Executive of the Year” in 2009. She has earned spots for her brands on the
prestigious and highly coveted trade lists including AdWeek’s Hot List, and
Advertising Age’s A-List.

min magazine named MaryAnn one of the “Most Intriguing
People” of 2004, Gotham magazine named her one of its “40 Under 40” in 2003,
and Advertising Age named her a “Woman to Watch” in 2003.

We
spoke to MaryAnn about the lessons she learned during the fundraising process;
the growth of m-commerce in the US; and why she doesn’t believe that women
should assume male characteristics to succeed in business.

TNW: Tell us about your $43m fundraising
round. What were the key lessons you learned from the fundraising process?

MB:

VCs bet
on the jockey, not the horse. The 'jockey,’ of course, is the founder and
leadership team. The ‘horse’ is the idea they’re building towards.

History shows that original ideas change time and again (pivot) at start-ups;
it’s most important to know that the leader(s) can manage that change well and
build value for the investors. It’s just as important to showcase the
leadership team’s strengths and experiences in investor presentations, as it is
to detail the product vision and its eventual grand success.

TNW: With the US leading the way in
terms of mobile usage and over a third of people buying things from their phones,
what impact do you think the growth of mCommerce will have on eCommerce in the
States - and the rest of the world - in the coming years?

MB:

Mobile commerce will have a huge impact on
eCommerce, and of course, on brick-and-mortar offline commerce, as well.

The convenience of shopping anywhere/anytime is simply too irresistible to
deny. Today, most consumers browse on mobile, and then execute the
purchase on their desktop/laptop, but I see that evolving to even more
purchasing on mobile as retailers and payment systems adapt to catch up with
consumers’ enthusiasm for shopping from the palm of their hand.

TNW: What is your business model?

MB: TheSwizzle is a free inbox organizer
designed to help consumers manage the commercial communications with brands in
their lives. Users can easily unsubscribe from no-longer-wanted email
subscriptions, and roll up the subscriptions they do want into a simple daily
digest. They can also browse our Gallery of 1,200+ retail newsletter
subscriptions to see current deals and product news, and easily add brands of
interest into their daily digest. Our business model is an affiliate
sales one. When a user clicks through an email from our Gallery, we earn
a commission on the products they buy.

TNW: What do you think could be done to increase
the number of women entrepreneurs?

MB: I think it’s important for entrepreneurs on
the Internet to have a basic level of technical knowledge so that they can
broadly scope the feasibility of their ideas, work knowledgeably with their
technical peers towards execution, and attract talent that respects their
technical chops as well as their leadership and strategic capabilities. Thereore, I think encouraging women to take technical courses in college (or
high school) is a great first step towards increasing the number of women
entrepreneurs. I also believe that catching women while young – and
therefore not yet saddled with financial responsibilities – is a way to
increase the number of women in the entrepreneurial world.

Women are
practical. Once they have mortgages to pay and mouths to feed, they’re
likely to lean towards more traditional, secure positions. Catch them
early!

TNW: What are the advantages of gender
diversity in a start-up? Are there any disadvantages?

MB:

I think a start-up with a product that
intends to serve and delight any audience, needs to have that audience on
its team.

If you’re building a communications platform for teens, you
better have some teens nearby to give input and poke holes in your plans. And most consumer products have women in their target demographic, so having
women on the team provides a first-hand “gut check” and market research to help
guide the product development and marketing. Especially since most
developers are men – it’s careless to build a female-oriented product without
close contact with women who’ll help guide them through the user
experience. I can’t think of any disadvantages to gender diversity!

TNW: What is your top tip for balancing
motherhood with a career?

MB:

Get over the guilt. Most women in the
world work.

Just because perhaps you don’t “have” to for financial reasons
like the gas attendant’s wife, doesn’t mean you don’t have to for fulfilment of
your own. I’ve never understood the mothers who sacrifice the challenges
and thrill of a career so that (in their minds) their kids can have a better
shot than them at achieving the same. Why should that privilege skip the
mother?

And tip two – share everything about your job
with your kids! What your company’s goals are, how you did each day, what
happened at the office, what milestones have been achieved. They’ll love
being a part of something that’s so important to you.

TNW: Do you lie awake at night sometimes
thinking about the company? What aspects of it specifically keep you awake?

MB: I lie awake every night of my life
thinking about my company. I did so less when I worked at a traditional
corporation, but even then, I was 100% committed, and “always on.”

As an
entrepreneur, your company is so fully intertwined with your life. You
own it. You have limited resources, limited time to succeed.

Every minute
of thinking, planning and executing is valuable. Specifically for TheSwizzle, I spend most of my time thinking about how to acquire new customers
at scale without massive marketing spend, which I cannot justify.

TNW: What has been your biggest challenge
throughout the history of your company, from planning to funding and execution,
and how could others learn from it?

MB: Perhaps others at my company would answer
this differently, as I’m sure we all feel challenged in different ways at
different times. For me, the biggest challenge has been the long
stretches of time (weeks) between major feature builds or consumer acquisition
spikes. Innovating takes time, and the valleys where nothing SEEMS to be
happening (while the developers are heads-down building, for example) can be very
difficult. Then again, I’m a bit of a “milestone-junkie,” and need the
thrill of success hourly to keep me sane!

TNW: What is one lesson about leadership you
learned from a boss or mentor?

MB: In my traditional career prior to becoming
an entrepreneur, I was a typical “top-down” type leader who set the vision,
laid out the strategies, and delegated execution to team leaders and their
subordinates. The culture where I worked very much emphasized the value
of experience and seniority, and leaders made big decisions, and then oversaw
their progress.

My mentor at Keep Holdings, Scott Kurnit, has a
completely different leadership style that I try to adopt as often as
possible:

Hire excellent people, empower them with full
accountability and then let them make all the decisions independently,
encouraging them to seek input from those around them as they go.

This
style certainly gives people a strong sense of ownership of their work – which
ALWAYS motivates their best work, often derived from long hours, sleepless
nights and incredibly passionate output. The drawback I see to this
leadership style is this: because the more junior person doesn’t always
have experience in what they’re doing (most start-ups are inventing, after
all!) they can take much longer when working independently and without
experienced guidance. And their final result – while passionately
developed and delivered with pride – is not always good enough. Leading
them from their best work to the best product for the company requires delicate
management, and more time.

TNW: Do you believe it is better to find
customers then funding or vice versa?

MB: Customers. Without doubt.

No
amount of investment can buy customers if your product itself can’t earn
them. And with customers, funding follows easily.

TNW: What is one lesson you would like to pass
on to other women leaders?

MB: I believe that everyone should use their
natural powers of persuasion, their passion, and their unique personalities to
their best professional advantage. I am not in that camp that says women
should act like men to succeed in a man’s world. At all.

I
see a lot of women put themselves into a disadvantageous situation by
demonstrating culturally “female” linguistic styles at work that in my opinion,
get better results outside the office.

What do I mean? The
valley-girl question mark at the end of each sentence – it may be cute at the
bar, but it screams of uncertainty at the office. The flirty interactions
with men which can be fun, of course, but I’ve yet to see them generate respect
from those men, or the observers around them. Opening each presentation with a
joke or self-deprecating anecdote – why, again? Lead with your smarts.

I
am so impressed when women command a conference room, a conference call, a board
room or a packed auditorium with their straightforward, educated, and
knowledgeable presentations.

Sign Up to our Newsletter

So you enjoy The NextWomen. Why not sign up to our monthly newsletter?You get a Letter from the CEO :-), the chance to catch up with the best of our recent articles - and some extra things we throw in once in a while.

What is The Next Women?

The NextWomen is a community of Investors, Entrepreneurs & Advisers. We build formats to support the growth of female entrepreneurs -from
startups to companies making millions. We provide access to capital, resources and networks,
offering our community a support infrastructure critical for success.

About TNW

The NextWomen is a community of Investors, Entrepreneurs & Advisers. We build formats to support the growth of female entrepreneurs -from
startups to companies making millions. We provide access to capital, resources and networks,
offering our community a support infrastructure critical for success. Join the community too! - See more at: http://www.thenextwomen.com/about-us/contributors#sthash.9GODHllB.dpuf

The NextWomen is a community of Investors, Entrepreneurs & Advisers. We build formats to support the growth of female entrepreneurs -from
startups to companies making millions. We provide access to capital, resources and networks,
offering our community a support infrastructure critical for success. Join the community too! - See more at: http://www.thenextwomen.com/membership/sign-up#sthash.0ApND3BW.dpuf

The NextWomen is
a community of Investors, Entrepreneurs & Advisers. We
build formats to support the growth of female entrepreneurs -from startups to
companies making millions. We provide access to capital, resources and
networks, offering our community a support infrastructure critical for success.